How I am learning German / Wie ich Deutsch lerne
What do I use to learn German? A lot of different things actually. I took German language classes in college for 2 years and then studied abroad in Germany for a year taking more language classes. Once I came back to the US, I took classes in German, but they were focused on German film, history, and politics.
During my college classes in the US we used the Kontakte and Stationen books. In Germany, the texts for my classes were written, developed, and compiled by my instructors.
Since starting to learn German I have developed a collection of German language learning books, some found in thrift stores, other gifted to me, or occasionally purchased new. You can see them all below. Most of these books were woefully neglected during my college years, with the exception of the Practice Makes Perfect series of workbooks which I rather liked.
This shelf is for all of my language learning books, so you can see some for my other languages, Norwegian, Latin, and French. There is also a German-Dutch dictionary for when I want to be able to read Dutch. I also have more books which aren’t even pictured on this shelf. Books such as my two american college textbooks, 3 or 4 German college packets, and a few more mass media language learning books. I’ll be collecting them from storage in California next week, so I will take an updated picture then.
What am I doing with these books now? Some of them I will work though extensively, mostly the newer ones and definitely the workbooks. Other are more to look through occasionally, or peruse for interesting tidbits. Books such as this one, originally published in 1957 fall into the latter category. While the vocabulary in older books is sometimes outdated, they occasionally explain grammatical concepts in different ways, which might help me to better understand that concept.
Now that I have a bit more time in my schedule, I’m hoping to work though these books and be able to review them on how useful, interesting, or just plain fun I found them to be. I like taking all of my notes by hand, especially when studying languages, so I’ve included a picture of my newest German notebook above.
